The I.F.C., along with the Asian Development Bank, Korea, and other backers, sees the need to bring electricity to one of the world’s poorest regions as more pressing than limiting carbon dioxide from fuel burning. The plants will emit about 23 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, according to the I.F.C., but using technology that is 40 percent more efficient at turning coal into kilowatt-hours than the average for India.

The decision powerfully illustrates one of the most inconvenient facets of the world’s intertwined climate and energy challenges — that more than two billion people still lack any viable energy choices, let alone green ones.

Traffic slowed during power outages in South Africa in January as traffic lights failed. (Rodger Bosch/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images).

And the fastest-growing population on Earth is the middle class, which — whether in India or Indiana — revolves around access to electricity and mobility. (Tata Power is part of the same conglomerate that is poised to sell millions of $2,500 Nano sedans to the expanding Indian middle class.)

[B]etter access to energy services and higher energy use by developing countries are fundamental to the development goals of the Bank Group and our client countries. The Bank Group is working to balance these energy needs with concerns about climate change.

Within this framework, I.F.C. is prioritizing investments in renewable energy around the world: it is tripling its renewable energy and energy efficiency investments over the next three years, supporting improvements in energy efficiency through financial intermediaries, and helping increase efficiencies in transmission and distribution. With fossil fuels likely to remain a key contributor to the world’s electricity needs, I.F.C. intends to support only highly efficient coal-fired projects, such as Tata Mundra, that have a relatively lower carbon footprint than existing coal plants.

India faces power shortages that leave more than 400 million people without access to electricity, mainly in poor rural areas. The country needs to expand generation capacity by 160,000 megawatts over the next decade, and this new project helps address this gap.

Just one indicator of the direction of things is that coal-sales ticker over at the Web site of Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private coal company. It reels off sales at about 8 tons a second, by my estimate. As of 2 p.m. today Peabody had sold 65,246,061 tons so far this year.

What is the consequence we should be drawing from this? Should we say: If the poor are burning coal, we as the wealthy should do as well, as my predecessor sas wrote? Or should we set the example, show that you can be wealthy without destroying the climate? Shouldn’t we even allow poor India to pursue its development priorities by putting the burden of fighting climate change on the shoulder who are responsible for the problem, and who are capable of adressing it?
In the Framework Convention on Climate Change, all countries including the US have agreed to work together to avoid dangerous climate change, according to their “common but differentiated responsbilities and respective capabilities”. Responsibility and Capability are thus key indicators who define, who should be bearing the cost of tackling the climate crisis.
US scientiest from Stockholm Environment Institute Boston and EcoEquity, a small think tank, have developed a proposal how to adress effectively the climate crisis while protecting the legitimate development aspirations of the poor. They call it the “Greenhouse development rights framework”.
It received lots of applause at the Climate Conference in Bali. Please check it out at //www.ecoequity.org/GDRs .
You will find out: Tackling climate change in a fair way is possible and it won’t break the bank.

The really interesting question, to follow on the last sentence of the story, is: what if you’re an Indian kid looking for a light to read by–and also living near the rising ocean, or vulnerable to the the range expansion of dengue-bearing mosquitoes, or dependent on suddenly-in-question monsoonal rains.

That’s one of the reasons we’re launching 350.org–because people everywhere around the world need some way to understand both their desires and vulnerabilities.

Sas,
We could power the world for many many generations forward, cheaply and with modern laws also do it fairly cleanly. Compare the US CLean Air Act to current practices in China, India, and other emerging “growth explosions”

There is no energy crisis, its a marketing myth.

From here: //tonto.eia.doe.gov/ask/coal_faqs.asp#coal_reserves
Quote: Recoverable coal reserves at producing mines represent the quantity of coal that can be recovered (i.e. mined) from existing coal reserves at reporting mines. These reserves essentially reflect the working inventory at producing mines. In 2006, the recoverable coal reserves in the United States totaled 18,880 million short tons at producing (active) mines.
The estimated recoverable reserves include the coal in the demonstrated reserve base (see below) considered recoverable after excluding coal estimated to be unavailable due to land use restrictions or currently economically unattractive for mining, and after applying assumed mining recovery rates. See the EIA Glossary for criteria. In 2006, the estimated recoverable reserves totaled 263,781 million short tons.

The demonstrated reserve base is composed of coal resources that have been identified to specified levels of accuracy and may support economic mining under current technologies. The demonstrated reserve base includes publicly-available data on coal that has been mapped and verified to be technologically minable. See the EIA Glossary for criteria. For 2006, the demonstrated reserve base was estimated to contain 491,076 million short tons.

Learn More: Coal reserves by state
Last updated: April 4, 2008
End quote.

From here: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
Quote: At the end of 2006 the recoverable coal reserves amounted around 800 or 900 gigatonnes. The United States Energy Information Administration gives world reserves as 998 billion short tons[28] (equal to 905 gigatonnes), approximately half of it being hard coal. At the current production rate, this would last 164 years.[29] At the current global total energy consumption of 15 terawatt,[30] there is enough coal to provide the entire planet with all of its energy for 57 years.[original research?]

The 998 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves estimated by the Energy Information Administration are equal to about 4,417 BBOE (billion barrels of oil equivalent).[citation needed] The amount of coal burned during 2001 was calculated as 2.337 GTOE (gigatonnes of oil equivalent), which is about 46 million barrels of oil equivalent per day.[citation needed] Were consumption to continue at that rate those reserves would last about 263 years. As a comparison, natural gas provided 51 million barrels (oil equivalent), and oil 76 million barrels, per day during 2001.
End quote.

While I’m AGAINST pollution over prosperity, I feel existing technology and legal framework is oin lace to manage our resources in a prudent fashion.

We also have some basic responsibility to maintain a fundamental social order. There needs to be balance in this discussion and its sorely lacking. Do you see Americans returnig to burning dung in the pot belly stoves?

You frame beautifully that carbon encumbering will grind the poor in ever newer fashion. Now, if carbon dioxide is not the bugaboo it has been made out to be, and present cooling is powerful evidence for that, why would you want to grind the poor and the powerless. It’s not just children starving from the biofuel insanity, it’s the poor of the earth kept that way, completely unnecessarily.

Carbon capping isn’t even going to save the earth if climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide has been exaggerated. Where is the ethics in all this. Think, people, think.
=======================================

“If you’re a village kid in rural India looking for a light to read by, no.”-A powerful ending indeed, Mr. Revkin.
It is a vicious cycle. On one hand, education will hopefully lift the less resourceful villagers out of poverty and make them aware of the environment, but then it will come at a cost. What does one weigh, basic amenities to lead a better life or a life with asthma and other lung conditions and erractic weather patterns. Its a catch 22, if poverty and hunger doesnt kill, diseases/illness/ and bad weather will get you.

It’s my sense that Jim Hansen is pushing for no new coal plants, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. As he’s written letters to the heads of Britain and Australia. Seems he’s being selective to pick where he might have greatest effect?

It seems that several facts have now come to light that debunk the idea that we’re killing the environment with CO2 emissions:

The predicted tropospheric hotspots that had been predicted by the IPCC failed to appear. When climatologist Dr David Evans and Christopher Monckton found an error in the way that the IPCC had interpreted the Stefan-Boltzmann equation and applied a revised (corrected) factor to the workings, they discovered that the temperature rise was as little as a third of what the World’s government think tank had predicted.

The IPCC’s computer models, used to predict the effects of global warming, it appears, failed to accurately predict the influence that water vapour has on the temperature of the earth. At the global climate change summit in Bali late last year, Dr Roy Spencer presented a paper to the IPCC, saying that rather than CO2 driving the formation of water vapour, which then drives up temperatures as a greenhouse gas, water vapour actually washes excess CO2 out of the atmosphere, dampening and balancing its affect as a greenhouse gas. This discovery was made thanks to weather satellites that showed water vapour forms a lot lower in the atmosphere than was initially suggested. Shock horror, the finely balanced system that is the global ecosystem is able to keep itself in balance… who’d have thought it?!

Apparently the lead author of the IPCC chapter on feedback (the word used to describe what effect – negative or positive – a gas has on the temperature) has written to Dr Spencer, agreeing that he is right.

CO2 output has a point of diminishing returns anyway, apparently the common analogy is painting over a window: the first layer of paint has a big impact on the amount of light let through, while each subsequent layer has a less obvious impact. Meaning that, even without the dampening effect of water vapour, a ‘tipping point’ so often spoken about by alarmists like Al Gore, is actually a scientific impossibility.

A far more thorough summary is available in Owen McShane’s column in the National Business Review (click here), which contains gems like this quote: “The delusion that by recycling and catching public transport we can help save the planet will quickly come to be seen for the childish nonsense it was all along.”

It’s nice to frame the question of coal or no coal from a Western perspective, but for Indians, it’s a case of burning low-Btu cow dung vs. burning high-Btu coal. If you’ve ever flown into New Delhi or Bombay, the cow dung miasma that hangs over both cities should make coal-fired electricity, which will help to clean the environment, relatively speaking, a desired end, not one to be condemned because it doesn’t meet Western sensibilities.
Steve

How can you blame third world countries when our own State Govt. of NY could not pass the Congestion Pricing Plan for NYC. We are doomed as a society, nation and world. The ignorance of the common human being in the face of mounting calamity is unbelievable.

What is clearly missing in this article is the other side effect of coal emissions. Mercury and other heavy metals.
Given the sorry state of India’s water supplies, and now the prospect of a mega plant belching this stuff, I wouldn’t give India a clean bill of health. Instead, like China, I suspect we will see marked increases in chronic health problems from respiratory illnesses to cancerous conditions.
One has to wonder about the true motivations of the World Bank, I.F.C., and the I.M.F.

Can’t agree with Bill McKibben that this is a “great piece.” It hardly touches on the realities.

By any measure, coal-burning power is poison. It means bronchitis and much worse for children in the vicinity. And that’s just the beginning. It should not exist. Period.

As McKibben and anyone else who has looked at systems knows full well, industrialization is poison. Again, period. The answer is – surprise, surprise – deindustrialization.

It’s mighty white of us wealthy westerners (you know, the ones who have pillaged and plundered other folks at every opportunity) to be concerned with the disparities involved in electrical distribution throughout the world, but poison is poison. (And “development” is mighty profitable, eh?)

Managed collapse is the only discussion to have. It takes into account the issue of disparities raised above, along with everything else involved in matters of “energy” and human lifeways and the health of all life on this wondrous planet. We must ALL give up the absurd notion of progress and get back to lifeways that sustain us.

The naysaying is inevitable here on the NYT, bastion of power (the other kind) and champion of technics. But there’s no arguing my point, which of course is not mine at all. Or maybe it will be completely ignored.
[ANDY REVKIN asks: On the poison front, have you ever been in the home of someone cooking on firewood or dried dung without ventilation? About 600,000 women and kids (mainly) in India die young from avoidable respiratory illness related to cooking on such fuels. Many would prefer a hotplate. I’m not making any judgments here, but any reason they shouldn’t have that option if they desire it? The UN estimate is about 1.6 million premature deaths worldwide each year from indoor cooking pollution.]

Let’s face it, metaphorically our species is driving toward a cliff marked “catastrophe” at a faster and faster rate and nothing is going to slow us down until we go over the edge and crash. So don’t worry, try to be happy and burn plenty of fossil fuel in the meantime.

This morning I was looking at the 1968 scifi book “Stand on Zanzibar” about overpopulation. At the time the world population was 3.5 billion and now 40 years later it is 6.6 billion. What more do you need to know about our future?

BTW, it may be cooling where poster no. 6 (“Kim”) lives, but it is not cooling globally. 2007 tied with 1998 for the 2nd hottest in the last 100 years.

At the present rate of fossil fuel burn, there won’t be any in 50 or 100 years. Nuclear power won’t be looking so bad then, even though we aren’t all that careful with the by products. Within a very short time, 250 years or so, this planet will be uninhabitable because of excess population, waste and nonsustainable consumption. Humans are only temporary tenants on this planet and given the way we have behaved, we deserve to be evicted.

Even if the current doubling rate for CO2 emissions (~20 years, from the same website) holds for India, it will take 80 years for India to catch up in per capita CO2 emissions with the USA (assuming no increase in the US per capita emissions).

That is a long time; perhaps with the inevitable technological advances that can be expected meanwhile, Indian CO2 emissions per capita will never reach the current US levels.

It’s oddly unsatisfying to know that, when the kid in rural India drowns in the raging flood waters or dies of communicable diseases spread by global climate change, he will have had some quality time for reading at night beforehand.

Like Stephen Hawking, I fear that humanity lacks the wisdom needed to look unselfishly ahead and take the absolutely essential actions necessary BEFORE we have too massively changed our environment and imperiled our species.

They should probably build more of these plants, if it allows them to retire less efficient plants. They could produce 40% more electricity while emitting the same amount of carbon. Plus I’m sure they can be retrofitted down the line to be even more efficient.

I’d be more worried about all those Tata cars … what do their emissions look like?

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.